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®©WWII Ammunition Storage or Dispersal Site in Bures Hamlet officially known as a Forward Ammunition Depot (FAD) |
The main Air Ammunition
Parks were: Barnham, Suffolk (serving RAF Bomber Command), Brafferton,
North Yorkshire (serving 4 Group North), Earsham (serving OTUs), Lords
Bridge (serving 2 and 3 Groups), Mawcarse (serving Scotland), Norton
Disney (serving 5 Group), Snodland (actually at Halling, serving 11
Group F), Southburn (serving 4 Group South), and Staple Halt (serving
11 Group F). When the USAAF arrived new Forward Ammunition Supply depots were built for its needs at sites including Braybrooke (Northamptonshire), Bures (Suffolk), Melchbourne Park and Sharnbrook (both in Bedfordshire). Where it was rational the USAAF was given sub-sites at existing depots as well. After the outbreak of hostilities the demands on the Air Ammunition Parks grew far beyond the planned limits. Total site limits were raised from 1,000 tons to 10,000 tons, and the individual stores designed to hold 56 tons of bombs were each, by 1943, holding some 600 tons of matériel. When the parks were renamed Forward Ammunition Depots in 1941 they became central depots with a number of nearby satellite sites, Advanced Ammunition Parks, to increase holding capacity further. Staple Halt became an Advanced Ammunition Park.
Since
investigating the village past, by far the most interesting aspect has
been the discovery of a vast war time ammunition dump in and around
Bures Hamlet. During
the Second World War, large quantities of munitions were produced and
imported and needed to be stored prior to use. In order to prevent large
ammunition dumps on airfields being destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing,
they needed to be stored well away from these targeted areas. To this
end, certain stretches of road were commandeered by the military for
use as storage depots. The USAAF
commandeered a vast acreage of land which stretched from Bakers Hall
across the countryside to Countess Cross near to Pebmarsh and down to
Wakes Colne. However,
Essex County Council records show the area around Bakers Hall farm as
"Wakes Colne RAF Station" Very few remains are visible today, but hopefully after extensive research the following information will shed some light on this extraordinary site. This area could well have been the largest ammunition dump in the country that utilised normal public roads Bures was not entirely
unique, records indicate there were three Forward Ammunition Depots(FAD`s)
in East Anglia, namely:- This event goes back to 1942, when Eric Doe (Farmer) at Pricketts Hall distinctly remembers the arrival of a large American staff car laden with `top brass` parking near to the farm. They wandered around the area, taking a particular interest in a large wood at Butlers Farm, which stood there at the time. Locally known as Nurses Wood, this was felled shortly after the war ended. Was this going to mean another airfield ? It became clearer later, Bures Hamlet was to be the site for a Munitions Dispersal Site. The wood at Butlers Farm was especially useful for the storage of incendiary bombs away from the prying eyes of the German Luftwaffe. The west of the village, fulfilled
the requirements of the military in that: Bombs would have been delivered airfields such as Earls Colne, whilst machine gun ammunition would obviously have gone to the bombers, and possibly nearby fighter stations like Wormingford. The `Dispersal Site` was primarily used to service USAAF bomber airfields in Mid/North Essex, including:- Earls Colne and possibly these, further towards
Bury in Suffolk:- During 1942/3 the number of planned
airfields rose dramatically, Essex increased from 6 to 27 with Suffolk
increasing 5 to 32. Plans were made for airfields at Assington (Suffolk)
and Beaumont (Essex) but they never materialised.
Earls Colne then became home to B-26 Marauders of 323rd Bomb Group in preparation for D-Day. Their control transferred from the US 8th to the US 9th Air Force in October 1943. Soon after D-Day, on July 21st 1944, the 323rd Bomb Group moved out of Earls Colne to Beaulieu in Hampshire to follow up the invasion. Earls Colne was then idle until September when it was handed to the RAF and operated with Albemarle and Halifax aircraft. At the same
time Bures would have changed its designation from an 8AF to a 9AF unit.
The USAAF used 6 wheel GMC open lorries
with a canopy for transport. The network of roads were constructed by a large number of negro USAAF servicemen. Local residents can still recall how they were made to work outside under atrocious conditions, with little consideration given to their welfare. At Butlers Farm they would queue up at the farmhouse in the hope of getting some additional food and water. The walls along the side of the road
were pushed over into the ditch to produce small areas of hard standing
along the verges approximately 50-100 yards apart for use as storage
bays. In other places the ditch was filled in with rubble.
Munitions of all kinds
were then transported along the roads and stacked on the areas of hard
standing, A local resident, recalls the Germans dropping an incendiary device, west of the searchlight along Colne Rd. Difficult to know if the enemy was trying to locate the searchlight position or the munition dumps. Fortunately, the incendiary fell on the wrong side of the road, any nearer to the village and the dispersal site would have been lit up for all to see. On another occasion a V1 rocket fell on farmland between Bakers Hall and the railway line, breaking numerous windows. Gordon Webber recalls on that evening, one almighty bang as the rocket plummeted into the ground opposite Bakers Hall where he lived. With the family safely tucked away he ventured outside to see smoke and flames pouring out of the crater. The American soldier who was in the guard post on the corner, was lying flat on the floor and muttered something like "Gee, what was that?" Many people think that living in the countryside was well away from the war, but in fact an area housing thousand of bombs had its own worries. Many a night a "doodlebug" could be heard with its familiar drone flying over the village. It was quite a relief to hear it disappear into the distance and not cut out directly above the dispersal site.
With the bulk of the 9AF operating on the Continent by the end of 1944, administrative control of Bures would have passed to an organisation called USSTAF (United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe), which would have overseen distribution of surplus munitions. It`s likely that, just after the war, the RAF's No. 95 Maintenance Unit (MU) were involved in clearing the ordnance and taking it to Ridgewell airfield for disposal. This MU and others, were similarly involved with the bomb storage sites at Earsham and Barnham Even after the war ended, bombs were still in place some three years later. According to the ex Station Manager at White Colne station they were loaded back into wagons and transported to docks such as Harwich. Here they were loaded onto ships and finally dumped out to sea, possibly of the coast of Scotland. We know from records that bombs were taken over to Ridgewell airfield where they were stored until the early 1950`s. They were then taken to Gt Yeldham railway station by 10 ton lorries for transportation, again possibly to Harwich. Acknowledgment
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